Talk:Unrestricted Warfare

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This book is strange, as is this article on it. As pointed out in the PROD, there doesn't seem to be any record of the publisher "Pan American Publishing Company" of Panama City. There is a "Pan American Publishing Company" of Los Angeles that publishes bilingual Spanish/English texts for grade schools. There doesn't seem to be much on this from anywhere other than the book itself (btw would the Chinese authorize the publication of this? Is it a copyright violation?), and a couple of things from the "intelligence" community. In short this has propaganda, spooks, and unreliable written all over it.

A couple of references that I could find

from Jane’s Intelligence Review http://www.janes.com/regional_news/asia_pacific/news/jir/jir000223_1_n.shtml

An article by: Dr Ehsan Ahari is a Professor of National Security and Strategy at the Joint Combined Warfighting School, Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia, USA.

A second from An online "Energy Bulletin" (see their editor's note) http://www.energybulletin.net/4301.html

Published on 8 Feb 2005 by 321Energy. Archived on 10 Feb 2005. China and the Final War for Resources by Bill Ridley

"[ Ed's note:

This article, while making some excellent points, refers uncritically to the document which is the focus of the article, known as 'Unrestricted War: China?s Master Plan to Destroy America.' The document is available as a book on Amazon .com, where it is described as a CIA translation of a Chinese military document (obviously with an appended sub-title). An initial google search didn't bring up much more about it. One commentator seemed outraged that on the one year aniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this book was re-released with a photo of the attacks on the WTC on the cover. The commentator apparently assumed that the Chinese authors had authorised this. As it happens, the book is published by the 'Pan American Publishing Company' of Panama City (who don't seem to have published anything else). Why they were supplied with the CIA translation, and whether or not the CIA approved of the cover art, is not known.

I think it's fair to say that while it does seem to be based on an authenic document, the translation and emotive cover of the book has the smell of a black propaganda effort, or at the very least, irresponsible sensationalism. This would not be inconsistent with the proto-neocon organisation Team B's mistranslations of Russian documents in the late 1970s, and related CIA misinformation which indirectly convinced the then head of CIA William Casey into believing the agency's own lies, lies suggesting that Russians were the masterminds behind seemingly unrelated global terrorist activities."

I'll suggest that any source on this seems unreliable, and that nothing should be put on Wikipedia until a RELIABLE SOURCE can be found.

Smallbones 15:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you 100%. Someone placed this book on deletion review, and I think it would be a good idea to recommence that.--Samiharris 14:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be pretty strange to delete this article suggesting that it is a CIA conspiracy or something like that, given the print version was the last version to appear. Just google around on the internet for the basic information if you want. It is an important book.

I will grant you that article could be written alot better.

The article should be something like this:

1 Intro

2 Authors

3 Version

3.1 Chinese Version

3.2 FBIS Version

3.3 FBIS abridged version

3.4 Print Version

3.4.1 Cover & Subtitle Controversy

3.4.2 Introduction Controversy

3.4.3 Publisher Controversy

4 Overview of the Concepts

5 References

6 Other Links

I would be willing to start the above, but it would take me a week or two to find the time. --Purpleslog 00:54, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This would not be inconsistent with the proto-neocon organisation Team B's mistranslations of Russian documents in the late 1970s, and related CIA misinformation which indirectly convinced the then head of CIA William Casey into believing the agency's own lies, lies suggesting that Russians were the masterminds behind seemingly unrelated global terrorist activities."

This would not be inconsistent with paranoia.

Arguing that Unrestricted Warfare is proof of a conspiracy in either Beijing or Washington is like arguing that Clausewitz's on war is anti-German propaganda dreamed up by Winston Churchill. Professionals in the Chinese military look to the only possible war that could destroy their government, and naturally look to avoid defeat. Professionals in the American military look to the only possible conventional war with a major power, and naturally look to avoid defeat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.31.194.87 (talk) 11:16, June 20, 2007 (UTC)

this is about content, content authored by two intelligent Chinese colonels nearly ten years ago. The Amazon book is a hack job by some capitalist opportunist when the text in its entirety is freely available on the web, so stop focusing on the lame book, regardless of cover art. There are two versions of the text, one summarized with commentary (such providing context to the authors' bias against Soros... and why aren't you picking up on that, sysops??), and the other in its complete form. This text is akin to valuable books like Brave New War, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, among many others. But maybe those reads are bad as well because of the Air Force / Counterterrorism pedigree of the first author and the active duty status of the second. Grow up. 76.167.203.164 15:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC) MountainRunner[reply]

There is a para in the article that says the book was translated and published in 1999, with a cover picture showing the WTC on fire; it also gave a link to the Internet Archives. But the link shows a book which reads, "Copyright 2002". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.185.191.170 (talk) 03:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Confession, they say, can be good for the soul.

In early 1999, I was teaching at the School of Information Warfare and Strategy, National Defense University, Ft McNair, DC. I was in charge of the Information Warfare component of what was called the Joint Land-Air-Sea Simulation wargames, which pit the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps War College students in a theater sized war game, along with their classmates from National and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

I'd come across a news item, from a Toronto outlet, that mentioned the book. So I called my research librarians; they referred me to FBIS; they told me that they had the book in Chinese, and had translated only the table of contents and the first and last chapters; but they didn't see the demand for the item, hence, no priority to translate the rest.

So I called my counterparts at the other four schools; within days, phone calls and emails were begging FBIS to turn up the gain and get it all translated.

In about two months, FBIS called me, and asked me how many copies of the CD edition I would like. "Six, please," I said.

In late November, I think it was(I do not have my appointment calendars from those days any more, sad to say), I got a call from the General Accounting Office. They, too, seemed to have someone on staff who was convinced that the recent FORSCOM budget justifications, citing the book, were all part of a dastardly plot to plump up their budgets with no real need. They had heard from various people at the Pentagon that I was the one that they needed to talk to.

So I went over and talked with them. After a while, it was clear that the analyst whose idea this was had not even read the translation of the book. After about two hours of discussion, the GAO seemed content that at least as far as I could see, this was no "red team" scam.

About that same time, the Commandant of the National Defense University of the Peoples Republic of China visited NDU Washington (at the invite of LtGen Chilcoate, then NDU-DC President); he gave a lecture on the modernization efforts that the PLA was undertaking, including its significant efforts to modernize their digital information warfare capabilities. To me, the book had its footprints all over that briefing.

I still teach from the translation of the book, and from that set of lecture slides; they both provide an interesting look in to China's efforts to bring their military into the modern world. Chinese officers I've encountered since then have also mentioned the book in conversation; so at least, at home in the PLA, its existence seems .... consistently reinforced enough that it passes the Occam's test. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Notonyourtintype (talk • contribs) 18:26, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]